Kingsman: The Golden Circle is an action spy comedy directed by Matthew Vaughn. The Kingsman sequel continues with the spy adventures of Gary “Eggsy” Unwin (Egerton). A year after saving the world Eggsy has now assumed the title of Galahad succeeding his late mentor Harry Hart (Firth). A new organization is threatening to make the Kingsman extinct and hold the world for ransom. It’s up to the Kingsman, led by Galahan and Merlin (Strong), to find allies and fight the mystery group known as The Golden Circle.
After watching the short animation involving a cross-over between Kingsman and Archer, I had some different feelings about the Kingsman franchise. I couldn’t quite understand why I liked the stylized violence in Kingsman: The Secret Service. After watching that short, it reminded me that Kingsman was in fact sort of like Archer. Filled with unnecessary amounts of violence, comedy and not taking itself too serious. The main difference being, Archer does everything better than this sequel. The Golden Circle’s tone changes too frequently between wanting to be serious and then complete ridiculousness. It creates jarring scenes that just feel mismatched as they try to have serious moments followed by crude humor and cartoonish action.
The acting is worse than The Secret Service or at least appears to be, due to a weaker script. There isn’t much character development happening outside of Eggsy and back story for a couple characters. The film is filled with too many characters and wastes the talent of this star filled cast. The film could use less characters and in fact, could benefit to a shorter run time.
The music isn’t anything that special. I love the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, but if I heard it one more time I was going to turn the movie off. The jokes were about as bad in the first film. The Golden Circle is filled with too much ordinary looking special effects. The action itself was fun at times, but some scenes went on for too long. I found the action to be sub par to The Secret Service.
Overall, The Golden Circle is mostly dull. They took everything they did in the first film and doubled down. It’s an overload of scenes that have been done or go too over the top that it becomes boring. The Secret Service had an equally weak story, but it was more fun. It introduced the premise and the action was tighter. There’s a reason why Matthew Vaughn had a hard time writing a sequel to a film that didn’t have much in the story department. It shows, as The Kingsman: The Golden Circle is unoriginal and brings nothing notable to the franchise, other than setting up a spin off movie.
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 2 hr 21 min
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Screenplay: Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn
Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges and Pedro Pascal
Producers: Matthew Vaughn, David Reid and Mark D.W.
Music: Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson
Cinematography: George Richmond